1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-color printer that performs multi-colored printing on paper using black toner and non-black color toner, and more particularly to a multi-color printer capable of printing images at high speeds to a web.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a multi-color printer that uses an electrophotographic process, a single photosensitive body is rotated multiple times. At each rotation, a single color of toner at a time is applied onto the photosensitive body, thereby resulting in the formation of a color image on the photosensitive body by the superimposition of toner images of multiple colors.
With the above configuration, however, a color image cannot be obtained without rotating the photosensitive body multiple times. Thus, multi-color printing takes many (e.g., four) times the time required for single-color printing.
Also, in addition to cut paper (e.g., paper cut in advance to predetermined sizes such as B5, B4, A4, A3, etc.), web paper (e.g., continuous paper rolls) is used in some printing situations. Thus, the arrangement described above requiring the rotating of the photosensitive body multiple times becomes difficult to implement for web paper.